THEATER ENTERTAINS. But often it also makes us think, and think deeply.
That’s the case with Jake’s Women, a play by Neil Simon now unfolding on the stage of the Paradise Center for the Arts in Faribault.
I attended the play on opening night last Friday after volunteering to greet guests at the door. I admit I felt hesitant about watching this drama because I expected the content might unsettle me. It did. But sometimes we need a jumbling of emotions and thoughts in a controlled setting.
CONTROL
Control. Main character Jake, played by Jake Gustine, struggles with control issues, especially in his relationships. He’s a writer, which in itself requires discipline and control. Fiction writers shape characters, stories, dialogue, control the plot. As a writer who’s written short stories, I understand the craft and could, in many ways, relate to what I was hearing from Jake on the stage.
But this play stretches beyond control and Jake’s work as a writer to his relationships with women. He’s struggling in his marriage to Maggie, his second wife. His first wife, Julie, died. I’ve been married for 44 years. That’s enough decades to realize partners won’t always agree—and they shouldn’t. There will be joys, struggles and hard times. But I’ve found through all of it, the good times and the difficult ones, that my husband and I balance one another and that our love for one another has grown and deepened through the years.
COMMUNICATION
Communication is a hallmark in any relationship. That message resounds in Jake’s Women. As a professional communicator/writer, I wanted to walk onto the stage and yell at Jake, “Listen, just listen!” That’s how invested I was in the play. I consider myself to be a good listener, a necessary skill for my previous work as a newspaper reporter with a bachelor of science degree in Mass Communications. Listening seems underrated. But I’m convinced if we all listened more than we talked, we would all get along better.
CRISIS
There are certainly many conflicts between Jake and the other seven characters in this play. But conflict also exists within Jake as he experiences delusions while in the throes of a mental health crisis. He struggles to separate fact from fiction, a mark of psychosis. I appreciate whenever mental health gets a spotlight if for any reasons other than to raise awareness and educate.
Throughout the play, Jake “talks” to the women who have been an important part of his life. Here the play gets interesting. The audience needs to pay close attention to lighting to determine when Jake is living in reality and when he is delusional. The set never changes and Jake never leaves the stage, which is a feat in itself during a play that lasts more than two hours.
I quickly found that I could not allow my mind to wander during this theatrical production directed by Palmer Huff and performed by the Paradise Community Theatre. I had to listen closely to every word spoken by Jake Gustine and performers Brianna Bauernfeind, Linda Anderson, Charli Gomez, Casper Andersen, Kate Southwick, Clair Borgerding and Kris Snow.
Jake’s Women is an intense play. It’s also thought-provoking. And it’s a play I highly-recommend you see.
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FYI: Upcoming performances of Jake’s Women are set for 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 24, and Saturday, April 25, and at 2 p.m. on Sunday, April 26. Click here for ticket information.
TELL ME: Have you seen Jake’s Women? If yes, what are your thoughts on the play?
© Copyright 2026 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Minnesota Prairie Roots 
Courageous crocuses April 9, 2026
Tags: blossoms, cold, commentary, crocus, crocuses, flowers, Minnesota, nature, seasons, spring, spring flowers, winter
EACH SPRING THEY EMERGE, poking through a layer of dried leaves mulching my front flowerbed.
When I spot the tender green shoots of crocuses, I feel a surge of optimism that winter is winding down. However, as a life-long Minnesotan, I also tamp my excitement. Snow falls in April here and sometimes in May. And these crocuses were bursting already in late March.
Days after I removed the leaves, exposing the crocuses to sunshine and air, they grew quickly. Soon purple blossoms spread wide, revealing golden centers like spots of sunshine.
I delight in the shades of purple, notice the lines tracing the petals, the way the flowers hug the ground as if also tentative about the season.
This first flower of spring seems to me courageous. Braving the cold of Minnesota, determined to reach the sunshine, to make a strong statement of hope that the cold and dark of winter will give way to warmth and light.
TELL ME: I’d like to hear your first flower of spring story.
© Copyright 2026 Audrey Kletscher Helbling